Share this with

Sorry George – you may be eternally handsome, but your Nespresso-drinking ways are no longer doing it for us.

Hamburg, Germany’s second-largest city, is officially taking a stand against coffee pods – because they are slowly but surely killing the planet.

And it’s not just the capsules that are in the firing line.

In the city’s 150-page ‘Guide to Green Procurement’, according to Le Monde, there is an all-out ban on disposable packaging in public buildings.

Damn you coffee pods! (Picture: Getty Images)

That means bottled water and beer, plastic plates, and plastic cutlery are all out.

There’s also a ban on chlorine-based cleaning products and pollutant air fresheners.

As much as we love the coffee, there’s no denying those capsules are terrible for the environment – so let’s hope the rest of the world follows suit.

Why are coffee pods so bad for the planet?

Pod-based coffee machines are popular all over the world – particularly in the US, where around one in three homes has one.

Advertisement

Advertisement

But the pods themselves can generate tonnes of plastic waste.

Delicious, but unsustainable (Picture: Getty Images)

In the US the pod-coffee of choice is the Keurig. Here in Europe, it’s Nestle’s Nespresso.

Nespresso pods are made from aluminium and are therefore, fortunately, recyclable – although Nespresso has not released figures about how many are actually recycled, according to a Guardian report.

A Nespresso spokesman told Metro.co.uk: ‘Nespresso has in place the capacity to recycle over 80% of used capsules globally, with 14,000 dedicated capsule collection points in 31 countries, and it is aiming to increase this to 100% by 2020.’